NATURE AS A TEACHER Otf ART. 299 



plation of natural objects. Learnt thus instinctively, through 

 the medium of the senses rather than the intellect, the deco- 

 rative are often seen to precede the mechanic arts ; witness 

 the elaborate and often graceful carvings which have been 

 found to ornament the rude utensils of the savage. But the 

 mechanisms of the plant, which are many, and the mechanisms 

 of the animal, which are more, require other eyes and other 

 powers than those of the uncultivated mind to observe, much 

 more to convert them to instructive uses. That with the pro- 

 gress of civilization such uses should not have been derived 

 from them to a greater extent is not so easy to account for, 

 and " surprising," we must confess it, " that an animal body 

 (or a vegetable) should have been so seldom taken as a model ; 

 extraordinary, that in the history of inventions the telescope 

 and microscope should be modern, when the eye, concave and 

 transparent, might have given rise to imitation as soon as man 

 had learn to give shape to natural and artificial glass." The 

 mechanism of an eye has, however, suggested some valuable im- 

 provements in achromatic glasses, while the structure of an ear 

 has afforded hints for the perfectioning of some instruments of 

 sound. Yet are we still (as Mr. Rennie remarks*) " behind in 

 our arts and sciences, because we have not always been observers. 

 If we had watched the operations of insects and the structure 

 of animals in general with more care, we might have been far 

 advanced in the knowledge of many arts which are yet in their 



* ' Insect Miscellanies.' 



